F THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REGIIVIE 

5 '^ ^ IN THE VALLEY OF THE FOX. 



BY 

ELLA HOES NEVILLE 
President of Wisconsin State Federation of Women's Clubs 



[From Proceedings of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, i8g8] 



MADISON 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 

iSqq 




Qass -BSZL- 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REGIME 
' IN THE VALLEY OF THE FOX. 




TfML.ELLA HOES NEVILLE 
It 

President of Wisconsin State Federation of Women's Clubs 



[From Proceedings of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 18^8] 



MADISON 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 
1899 



,f 



40097 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REGIME IN THE 
VALLEY OF THE FOX.' 



BY ELLA HOES NEVILLE. 

The three great nations which fought at different times for 
"the possession of the new world, each left the mark of their in- 
fluence, which remained for a time on the settlements which 
they had made. The invasion of the Spanish, in the 16th 
•century, was an invasion by fierce warriors inspired by lust of 
^old and conquest. The civilization which they founded was 
•scarcely better than that they supplanted. After them came 
the French, full of the spirit of adventure, with the Jesuit 
fathers urgent to win the souls of the conquered people, and 
gather them within the bosom of the Church. Religion and the 
fur trade, went into the wilderness hand in hand; it was ex- 
pected to found an empire on peaceful traflfic, and the gospel of 
.good will. 

The English, a nation which left the most lasting influence on 
people and customs, thought little and cared less for the wel- 
fare of the native possessor of the lands. They drove the sav- 
age tribes from their hunting grounds; went in and inhabited, 
-or ravaged and destroyed. The policy of the French was differ- 
ent. They came with the spirit of genial comradeship; mamned 
-and inter-married, and reared their dusky race in the forests — 
a race from which are ciescended some of the first families of 
Wisconsin. 

As bold and hardy pioneers of the wilderness, the Frenchman 
has rarely found his equal. In his own country; what he had 
of civic ability faded under the voluptuous court of Vei'sailles, 
while his mind and heart were kept in leading-strings by a 

' Address before the State Historical Convention at Madison, February 
22, 1899. 



138 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

church which was absolute. The new w^orld gave him unbridled 
liberty; it also gave scope for his energies, and showed the 
stuff of which he was made. Consequently it became the field 
of his most noteworthy accomplishments. Here he led the way 
in the path of discovery, alw^ays in peril, but with an indomi- 
table spirit that overcame difficulties and laughed at danger. 

When on the Plains of Abraham, New France passed into 
possession of the English, there was little change in the life of 
the French habitan. England succeeded to the policy of the- 
French people, who were never colonists; they had not encour- 
aged settlements, and England followed in the same path. She 
wished the land of the great Northwest to remain a wilderness — 
the home of the trappier and the fur trader, of the Indian 
hunter and the French voyageur; a barrier against the growth 
of the seaboard colonies toward the interior. 

Here in Wisconsin, near the old fort at the mouth of Fox 
River, a little group of French hamlets had been planted, dif- 
fering in culture and refinement from most other French settle- 
ments. Roosevelt, in his Winning of the West^ in a general sum- 
ming up of the French in that part of the country, says: " Three 
generations of isolated life in the wilderness had greatly changed 
the character of the trader, trapper, bateauman, and adventur- 
ous warrior. It was inevitable that they should borrow many 
traits from their savage friends and neighbors. Hospitable but 
bigoted to their old customs, ignorant, indolent and given tO' 
drunkenness, they spoke a corrupt jargon of the French tongue. 
All their attributes seemed alien to the polished army officer of old- 
France. " It is clearly evident that Roosevelt had never made 
a study of the French and their descendants in the Fox River- 
Valley, or he would have qualified this broad statement. In 
contrast to his estimate of tlie French settler, listen to what 
aa old-time resident of Green Bay wrote in the early years of 
the century — and this a long time after that of which Roose- 
velt wrote, when race differences w^ould have grown less, and 
deterioration of the French greater: "The settlers of Green 
Bay lived in primeval simplicity; of all people they seemed the- 
most innocent, honest, truthful and unsuspecting. * * * They 
inherited their manners from their forefathers, the French, and 



INFLUENCE OF FRENCH REGIME. 1 39 

politeness and good breeding was the rule, from the highest to 
the lowest. It gave them ease and gracefulness of deportment, 
often a surprise and a reproach to the Yankees, rendering their 
company acceptable and engaging with the most cultivated and 
polite, and .insuring in their intercourse with each other the 
preservation of friendl}' feeling and good will. * * * Frenchmen 
who have visited Green Bay have remarked on the purity with 
which the French language was spoken there compared with the 
Can ad as. " ' 

I have wondered if the title of this paper were not somewhat 
of a misnomer. The French left no lasting impression on the 
development of Wisconsin as a whole; had they never come, the 
result would have been the same. Yet their influence is un- 
doubtedl)^ stamped on the character of the lower valley of the 
Fox, and the oldest town in the State, because of it, differs from 
any other western town. 

Augustin de Langlade, the Father of Wisconsin, as we like to 
call him, planted, in the wilds of what is now a great State, 
the first home west of Lake Michigan, on the spot hallowed by 
the utterance of the first prayer to the living God. It stood on 
the banks of the Fox — about the site of the power-house of the 
electric street railway of the Green Bay of today — where, ac- 
cording to tradition, Allouez and his followers landed on the eve 
of the day of St. Francis Xavier. 16(59, and celebrated mass, 
after their perilous journey. 

The descendants of Charles de Langlade, son of Augustin, 
while not of pure blood, have yet been possessed of all the 
peculiarities of their French ancestry. They intermarried with 
other French familes, which were gradually added to the settle- 
ment; and when the Americans came, the whole formed one 
neighborhood, controlled by French tastes and manners. The 
people were liberal, free-handed, and generous, intelligent and 
appreciative of the advantages of education. School-houses soon 
sprung up, and it is noted that every list of contributors to the 
support of the schools is lib'^rally headed by a Grignon, a de- 
scendant of the De Langlades. The daughters of the family 
were sent to the convents of Montreal to complete their educa- 

' A. G. Ellis's "Recollections," in Wis. Hist. Colls., vii, pp. 219, 220. 



I40 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

tion, and they returned to La Baye, modest and virtuous, with 
a good education in the French language, a smattering of musie 
and the arts, and iri-eproachable manners. 

The French nation has never been noted for any of the char- 
acteristics of our Puritan ancestors. They were volatile, fond 
of ease and amusement, and, while upright and honest, were 
not given to steadfastness of purpose. They took upland along 
the river, — two or three arjaents wide, and running back in- 
definitely, — and cultivated these small farms just enough for the 
sustenance of the family — an easy task, for the land responded 
readily to cultivation, without the labor needed to revive an 
exhausted soil. Meat and fish were to be taken almost from 
the doorstep; and clothing was furnished from the spoils of the 
chase. The women had inherited from their ancestors a skill 
in culinary art; their px^eparation of the native foods was famed, 
even in foreign countries. Entertainment was lavish, without 
the weary restraints of formal etiquette and conventional rules. 
Under the low, bark roof there could always be found a fiddler 
ready to wield the bow, and moccasined feet tripped merrily tO' 
the gay tunes. Light and graceful, the native belles held sway, 
and many a young officer of aristocratic lineage forgot the claims 
of civilizati(5n in the witchery of their smiles. 

Life was gayest in the autumn, for then the voyageurs from 
Quebec began to arrive on their way to the winter posts on the 
Mississippi. Their approach was heralded by the sound of gay 
boat-songs, caroled as they paddled their canoes up the river. 
They settled upon the little cantonment like a flock of birds of 
gay plumage, so brilliant was their attire. With shirts of 
gaudy stripes, blue trousers banded about the waist with scar- 
let sash, jauntily tied at one side, around the throat loosely- 
knotted colored kerchiefs, the head covered by a worsted cap or 
turban of variegated hue, this brilliant company always started 
a conflagration of fun, which, so long as they remained, ran riot. 

In none of the other settlements of the State was life enjoyed 
to the same extent. Letters from the native youths exiled to 
the hamlet of Milwaukee are yet extant, in which the writers 
yearn for the pleasures of La Baye, especially for its music. 
"There isn't a fellow here who knows how to play a fiddle," 



INFLUENCE OF FRENCH REGIME. 14I 

bemoans one poor young man. Anothei', becoming unuttex'ably 
weary of a winter theie, made the long journey of over a. 
hundred miles on snow shoes and alone, for only one week of 
unalloyed pleasure at La Baye Verte. It was then called " The 
City," in acknowledgment of its lively character. 

The Grignons, Roys, Ducharmes, Brunettes, and Che val Hers 
formed a charmed circle. Some of them, through the fur trade, 
acquired considerable property, and were considered, for those 
days, wealthy men. Augustin Grignon, who had settled at the 
Kaukaulin rapids, lived in feudal style, and, with his Pawnee 
slaves and a number of engages, exercised a hearty, though 
primitive, hospitality. His house was often so crowded at 
night as to inconvenience himself and family; but the cordial 
welcome, the happy smile, and the bountiful good cheer, never 
failed. 

There were other men than those meationed who left their 
stamp on the character of the first white settlement in Wiscon- 
sin — men of striking and impressive characteristics; but there 
is not time to individualize. This account, however, would be 
incomplete without at least brief mention of one who stands 
out a distinct figure. Judge Porlier was well born, of the old 
French nobility, and had received a good education in Montreal. 
It was said by those who knew him, that a few moments in his 
company assured you that you were in the presence of a man of 
culture and fine tastes. He was noted as well for his high moral 
character as for the purity and elegance of his language. 
Looked up to by his neighbors for counsel and assistance, many 
of their business papers are found to be in his handwriting; 
and nearly all, we are told, were made without compensation. 
it was not alone his superior intelligence and his high bearing 
as a gentleman which gave him the strong hold he had on the 
affections of the people, but his goodness of heart, and readi- 
ness at all times to help a friend. 

The settlement at the mouth of the Fox passed slowly through 
the successive stages of village, town, city. A decade or so 
ago, it was sometimes dubbed old-fogyish and slow. It is true 
that the old town had gotten along in years before it threw off 
the spirit of the insouciant, happy beginning, and took on the 



142 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

cold, commercial temper of other communities. It seemed, and 
yet seems, to hold an obligation to the past, which the present 
has not power to make it forget. There was a witchery about 
it that caused each new comer to throw off care, and live in the 
pleasure of the moment. The houses, through the lay of the farms 
along the river front, were not far apart, and in the town of 
Navarino there was a bond of goodfellowship which made the 
settlers as of one family. Even after the Americans outnumbered 
the French, there was an intoxication in the very atmosphere, 
under the spell of which each and all fell. The claims of busi- 
ness were never too pressing to give way to a dance, a sail, or a 
picnic party. 

One bright morning the little town awoke to find itself 
left far behind in the march of progress. Since then it has 
never been quite the same. It will always hold its rich legacy 
■from the past; but within the last decade or so, it has become a 
thriving commercial city. Men of business hold the reins, and 
the descendants of the old French habitans have yielded acre 
after acre of their rich possessions, until now they have little 
which they can call their own. There are but few of them left, 
but they have the veneration and respect of those who, in their 
turn, are now old settlers. 

But a few years ago, there was occasionally to be met on the 
streets of the city, like a spirit of the past, a tall, stately 
woman, above the average height, of dignified presence and im- 
perial bearing — one of the last of the descendants of the 
"Father of Wisconsin," Augustin de Langlade. Miss Ursule 
Grignon was a part of the best of the old French regime. Of 
a gentle, courtly manner, modest and retiring, with a fine com- 
mand of language, her presence was always a delight. As one 
passed her on the street, in her black garb, with a shawl drawn 
tightly about her sloping shoulders, one intuitively felt her 
birth and bi'eeding. It was a pleasure to receive her recogni- 
tion, and the personality of her bow was as a benediction. Miss 
Orignon's last appearance at a social gathering — in early 
years she was one of the happiest, gayest, most eagerly sought 
dancers of them all — was in the old colonial home of one whom 
we of today love and respect, as a part of the last of the old 



INFLUENCE OF FRENCH REGIME. I43 

garrison clays. She stood beside her hostess in a drawing room 
filled with spindle-legged furniture and old pictures, a charming 
presence, cheerfully, benignly receiving the greetings of the 
newer, younger, — I can not say better, — Green Bay; a link 
between the dreamy, peaceful li'fe of the past, and the pushing, 
commercial existence of today. 

The old French regime has passed away. It has, however, 
left, in the valley of the Fox, a heritage which clings as the 
odor of flowers to the vase which is shattered, perfuming and 
refining the rough vessel of clay. 



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